Screenshots of Desktop/Start Menu/Taskbar Thread

See I don't know what the point is of an empty desktop? Who wants to hunt around for launch menus or icons? I want them there, so I can click them. Also I rarely sit and look at my desktop, 90% of the time I am in a game. Computers are very functional for me,I care little for how it looks. Linux looks far far better than windows, if I was worried about looks I'd run Linux or OSX.

 

This thread brings back memories...

When I was on XP, I hated the default Luna (blue) theme. 1 word: Ugly. Luna (silver) was much more bearable but I preferred Royal Noir (although slightly glitchy) and Zune theme. Still, it wasn't enough and I went with custom themes that required uxtheme.dll patching. Finding the right theme that suited my taste was like digging for gold (DeviantArt among the many places) but once I found the ones that I liked...it was a treasure. I usually had a fling with darker themes. Lost track of what those are unfortunately. Stupid me.

Then came these...
Docks: tried a few and stayed with Rocketdock for quite some time.
Fences: good for a short while when I was messy and placing stuff on desktop. Not for long though. I figured that it encouraged my lack of organization discipline.
Rainmeter: seemed to be a customization powerhouse but isn't exactly what I was looking for. Too much for my taste.
Launchers: Again, not my thing.

With Vista, came Aero Glass. Surprisingly, I was one of those that really liked it. This is odd considering my earlier preference. I found that the "transparency" and "blur" effect allowed me to better focus on the contents of the window rather than what's on the borders. "What a change"...I thought. I converted and even tried getting the Aero Glass effect on XP (I was dual-booting at that time).

Still, I didn't stop. I couldn't but I got lazier. That's when I found Custopack. Tried a few from the gallery and ended up with Gaia

-http://www.custopack.com/custopack/gaia-gaia10us-

I was undecided and kept switching things. It remained more or less the same when I went with Windows 7.

As time passed by, I realized that most of the time my workflow distracted me from my customization and so the mood toned down. I even stopped using themes on Firefox.

Nowadays, I keep it simple and use slide show(s) as my desktop background. It used to be reapers/skulls but the one I'm currently using is a set of wallpapers of female celebrities/artwork. Nothing much in terms of eye-candy but I survive. I guess the attraction of the opposite gender never fails for me.




P.S. Feeling tempted to get back to the "customization world" on the web just to regain "those were the days" experience...

 

Cant upload my desktop its too big apparently.
What are members using to upload desktop image..i used the snipping tool and it was a 3mb file

 

Save to JPG as it should be smaller.

 

Damn, i just formatted my laptop 3 weeks ago.
I had it heavily skinned and it looked AWESOME.
I takes me a couple hours to customize it and i-m . . . lazy.
Maybe in a couple weeks . . .

 

Ok heres mine eventually and many thanks to safeguy for the help.

 

How about this one

 

Agreed. When I'm using my computer I'm not sitting there staring at my desktop. I have a browser open most of the time, or other app. And I want the things I use most often to be right in front of me, and easily accessible, via 2 quick clicks. Not have to dig for them.

And I have my power options set up to turn my monitor off after 10 minutes of inactivity anyway. So I wouldn't get to enjoy staring at my desktop even if I wanted to (which I don't, really). Leaving it up like that is actually potentially harmful.

Now if you want to use a neat screensaver on the other hand... that makes sense. Like a virtual aquarium or something. Those are comforting. But I don't do that because I've come to find my box is less responsive after resuming from having a screensaver run for an extended period of time. Plus some things won't work with a screensaver active (updates, defrag), at least here on XP. Don't know if it's the case on newer OS's. So I just have my monitor turn off via power options instead.

 

here's 8.1 sporting a theme from WindowBlinds and a mouse pointer by CursorFX.

because if i have to look at a computer for hours per day it might as well look nice.

click on the image for larger version.

 

""Leaving it up like that is actually potentially harmful""
Not true with today's monitors

""less responsive after resuming from having a screensaver run for an extended period of time""
Somewhat true, with a stock windows install, my OS windows XP does not suffer from these little problems of course it is not a stock install

 

i've seen screensavers use 100% of the CPU.
so it's something to watch out for...

 

Nice seeing someone other than myself, that uses PicPick

 

I just skinned my laptop again. Ill post a picture later!

 

Personally, I can't stand clutter.

 

I'm with you on that

By the way, Nice desktop

 

Here's mine 06/30/2013...

 

Here is my desktop Windows 8 with Rainmeter

 

Very nice desktop

What is that "31 degrees" in your tray (Hard Drive, CPU)? Is this a feature of Rainmeter?

 

It's CoreTemp - showing my CPU temperature. The number next to it is CPU load However, Rainmeter has several skins which also provide this feature. Thanks for your comment.

 

Thank you, I might give Core Temp a try

No problem

 

The following reflects one of our staff's home computers and not any from our work:

In order to have a good view of the chosen desktop background picture there are no icons present on the desktop. Problem solved, right? No. As it was mentioned earlier almost no one has just their desktop showing most of the time to behold the beauty of the image so therefore....an idea came and since the browser stays on almost all the time the computer is manned that leaves us with one problem still. How can it be arranged to have a pleasant image on the screen when one is not actively doing some task but yet have the browser at the ready when needed? The answer is simple: Have as the start page an image from one's images folder for example. Thus the browser is already started and at the ready but just sitting idle a beautiful image is there to view:

 

Windows 8.1 using the Fearomone windows theme and matching mouse cursor.

click on the image to see a larger image without compression/resizing artifacts.

 

my present desktop

 

Went back to Win7 after Many weeks with an incredibly lame OS (8.1)... I feel so much better now ... and i'm glad to resuscitate the thread.

 

Since the picture had a huge file size, I'm just gonna link it.
hxxp://img716.imageshack.us/img716/2614/v47y.png

Which gives me the better performance overall compared to XP and 7.